 This is Mises Weekends with your host, Jeff Deist. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back once again to Mises Weekends. It is our last show of 2017, and on behalf of everyone at the Mises Institute, we would like to wish you and your families a very happy and healthy and prosperous new year. So our final show features our good friend, Dr. Bob Murphy, giving a talk at an event we hosted in Orlando just a few weeks ago, giving his particular take on the culture wars, which is a topic I'm sure very close to all of us. And I think if you're a fan of Bob Murphy, you'll enjoy it very much. And of course, we look forward to some great new shows and some great new guests on Mises Weekends in 2018. What I wanted to do for this forum is to not do my conventional talk. So I'm going to touch on some things that I always hit in these types of events, but also try to go beyond that. So this was built to you guys, and what you thought you were getting is we're going to be looking at the trends and sort of looking at the future. So that's always a dangerous thing to do. So I want to at least just set the benchmark here of what I'm trying to be. So some of you already know this, but back in 1998, Paul Krugman was asked to write something on trends of the future and make predictions. And so this is what Krugman wrote in 1998. By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machines. So I can't say that what I'm going to say to you guys is going to be correct, but it will be not that horribly wrong. So that's what I'm going to do. I was pretty sure that joke would work with you guys. All right, not a lot of Krugman fans in the crowd. Let me also say that what I have to talk about is very pessimistic, especially in the medium turn. So I just do want to mention that I have a religious faith, and that's why I'm upbeat in the long run, but suffering produces wisdom. And in that respect, I think we're going to get a lot wiser over the next 10 years. So that's one way of summarizing where I'm coming from. So let me just mention, and by the way, it's almost eerie how much Jeff and my remarks here are dovetailed with each other. We didn't plan it like that. We're seeing things mostly the same way, but my conclusion is going to be a bit perhaps more extreme than what his was. So we will give you some variety there. So let me just endorse everything he was talking about, his diagnosis of the trends, but what I want to add on top of that is, I think there's a really bad economic crash coming. All right, so I think Jeff might believe that also, but he didn't stress that. So what I want to say is all of these things we're seeing, you know, how much Americans are at each other's throats. And especially if you're not online a lot, I mean, my hat's off to you that you probably are wiser for that decision. You have more sanity, but I have been just really surprised. I'm going to come back and give you some more specifics in a minute, but I was surprised at just the vitriol and how much people hate each other now. And this is when, you know, there's still food on the shelves, right? And we're not being literally bombed by another country. So I mean, you can imagine how bad would things get if, you know, the economy crashes or if the dollar crashes, and then all of a sudden, you know, the money coming from Washington gets cut off and people can't get jobs and, you know, their supply interruptions and so on, where there's another major terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Imagine the climate right now and how much people distrust each other. And beyond that, don't trust their motives. Like they think those people over there, my fellow Americans are just evil. Like there's half the, well, let's say 30% of the country thinks another 30% is just moral monsters and vice versa. And so I'm saying, and that's what we're seeing even now when the economy's just, you know, kind of blicky. But imagine if there's a huge crash, like Great Depression era stuff, with these cultural forces in play, and that's the kind of thing I'm very concerned about. So just keep that in mind when I come to why I am more aggressive in this sort of, you know, solution or what can we do to make the best of a bad situation. It's because I'm worried about that sort of outcome. So just to give you a picture of this, the way I, if you come and talk to me afterwards, I can send you links to, you know, more formal presentations to back up some of this stuff. But just the big picture, if you would all buy the Austrian story about what happened with the housing boom and bust, you know, it has to do with the Federal Reserve, had an easy money policy, you know, there was the dot com bubble in the late 90s and then the crash and then the September 11th attacks. So the economy on paper should have had a bad recession in the early 2000s. And it did officially have a recession, but Greenspan was the Fed share at the time and brought down interest rates and people were calling him the maestro because wow, at least housing kept rising even as the economy, you know, went into a formal recession. And then in retrospect, people of course were saying, you know what, maybe that wasn't the best thing to do. Maybe he shouldn't have replaced the Nasdaq bubble with a housing bubble that just postponed the pain and set us up for an even worse crash, 2007, 2008. So, you know, how do the Austrians fit their narrative into that timeline is they'll say, okay, yeah, the Fed had an easy money policy. This is standard Austrian business cycle theory, just adapted to the particulars of the situation, that there's a crash, the Fed slashes interest rates, pumps in extra money that gives the appearance, the illusion of prosperity, but it really is just built on quicksand because you're not making us richer, you're not fixing the structural problems just by creating money out of thin air and injecting into financial markets, all right? But then if you look at the numbers and what happened to me, you know, if that story sounds plausible to you, well, like for example, interest rates, so the federal funds rate that when they say the Fed cut interest rates today, that particular metric, it was at six and a half percent in 2000 and then it was brought down to 1% by the middle of 2003. Okay, so that was the lowest interest rates got in that easing cycle and then they started ratcheting it up gradually and every time the Fed met they had raised it by 25 basis points, 50 basis points over the next several years and they kept it at 1% for one full year and then the middle of 2004, that's when they started tightening, all right? So if that's the idea, if you buy the Austrian story then you have to think the housing bubble to the extent that it was either exacerbated by or caused by easy money, it's the fact that the Fed took interest rates down to 1% and held them there for a year, that's, you know, what you gotta think did it or that was a big contributor and like I said, the timeline works with that if you look at graphs of the housing price appreciation against Fed policy. So the story fits, I'm just telling you that in terms of the magnitudes, if you believe the basics of the Austrian story, that's what you gotta, you're committed to is to think bringing down interest rates to 1% and hold them for a year gave us the housing bubble that at least exacerbated it. Okay, so then what happened after the crisis hit in the fall of 2008? They brought interest rates down to zero and held them there for seven years and then started slowly raising them and we're still very low, we're just barely above where we were when Greenspan brought them down to 1% right now. Okay, so to the extent that you just are picking interest rates as a measure of Fed's easy versus tight money policy, what they did is it's not even close and then as many of you already know if you look at even what I just said is misleading because it's overly optimistic because once you get interest rates down to 0%, it's hard to push them below that because you get the idea because you lend someone $100 and they give you $100 back next year it's hard to make it go lower. I'll lend $100 and just pay you back 98 next year, right? Okay, so because you could just store it under your mattress. Incidentally though, I mean economists used to use logic like that to prove negative nominal interest rates are impossible until we had negative nominal interest rates in Europe at which point economists said, ah, we can explain that, just for a small speaking fee I'll explain all to you, right? So economists are very good at after the fact explaining what just happened. So my point is the fact that interest rates got brought down to that federal funds rate got brought down to 0% was there for seven years that makes it look like, oh that was a little bit easier and then seven times as long. No, if you look at other measures like the Fed's balance sheet, I mean it's not even close. In the Fed's balance sheet, more than doubled in like the first seven months right after the fall of 2008 when the crisis hit. So if you want to think of it this way, Ben Bernanke inflated the money supply more than all Fed presidents combined in like seven months, so he was an overachiever. So I'm just trying to get you to see that and we can talk and I know some of you have asked me in the Q&A I'm happy to talk about, well gee, why didn't, how come bread's not $30 a loaf and that kind of stuff and I'm happy to get into that but my point is just to the extent that you at all buy the basic idea that if the economy's bad you don't fix it by creating a bunch of money and certainly not by the Fed creating trillions of dollars and then buying mortgage-backed securities and debt issued by the federal government that that's probably not the way to fix the economy. Well that's what they did and that's what made the stock market start booming and think of all the things that the Obama administration did. Bring in an Affordable Care Act extensive regulations on coal-fired power plants running, there were four years in a row where the budget deficit was higher than a trillion dollars most recently there was $666 billion. So the amount, just the the mushroom of the federal debt, all these things that even in normal times any two or three of them you would, as a free market friendly person you would have been like wow that's not good and all that happened all at the same time after this collapse of the housing bubble everyone admits if we had just stepped back and done nothing major investment banks would have gone down if they hadn't been bailed out. So what I'm saying is that this feeling like this right now and okay I think there's some people like okay that was bad, the great recession was bad and we're kind of slowly limping and coming out of that I don't think that's correct. I think they pushed off the real crash and it's going to be that much worse and now that they're tightening at some point it's going to hit. Let me give you and so as interest rates rise just to give some indications is okay but what specifically you know you're just as vague you know wow this can't be good but specifically what are some of the you know shoes that are going to drop here so last fiscal year the interest on the federal debt held by the public so the amount of money in terms of the treasuries expenditures you know they spend money on the military social security da da da how much was just interest payments outstanding federal debt held by the public and that's keep that in mind I'm talking here about the debt that's you know just held by outsiders because there's a lot of the debt that's theoretically held by the Social Security Trust Fund right so this is money that's literally you know the government has to tax people to then send checks to outsiders who are sitting on treasuries that was $276 billion last year okay I mean much bigger than most countries entire output was just the interest in one year to service the existing debt and that was with a a yield of 2.3% okay so that's partly what the explanation is how could the debt have gotten so big since you know the last year the George W. Bush administration was a big deficit and like I say under Obama there were several years where it was enormous and even now it's still big and of course the Republican plans for the tax changes are going to presumably make the deficit still high going forward partly the reason that pain hasn't manifested itself is because that was at the same time when interest rates collapsed okay so it's sort of like you can run up credit card debt as long as you keep getting 0% APR balance transfers in the mail but then when those offers to roll it over stop that's when you know you're really in trouble so just imagine in 2006 just to give you a frame of reference the average yield on outstanding government was 5% so double what it is right now so even if interest rates just rose a few points not you know some crazy scenario where we're grease but just going back to what interest rates were a decade ago then that would more than double the service costs so you know more than $250 billion per year extra at interest payments okay so just think about that I mean people are freaking out as Jeff said calling the Republican tax plan Armageddon that's expected to do what at least the static analysis 1.5 trillion over 10 years so that's 150 billion extra a year and everyone's losing their mind saying this is the worst idea ever if interest rates just go up two points that's an extra 250 billion a year in debt service costs okay so I'm just trying to get you to see how big these numbers are and again I'm not talking about what if the dollar crashes or what if the treasury my I'm just talking slight increase of two percentage points the other thing is people are praising Janet Yellen as the best fed chair ever and the reason they're saying this is because they're saying look at the feds mandate what's their dual mandate is to keep price inflation down and high unemployment and you know to have stability and the unemployment rate officially is very low and you know we don't see CPI blowing up so she's doing a great job by the way I think she's smart if she can get out before the crash happens she will be able to say like it wasn't my fault you know you men don't know how to run a central bank you know that's that's how I would play if I were her but there's certain things with the labor market and again these are all official numbers it's not that I have to go to shadow stats or something these are all you can look this stuff up St. Louis Federal Reserve these part of the reason and I know many of you know this but I just want to say it for comprehensive sake partly why the official unemployment rate number is so low is because the way that number is counted if you're not actively seeking work you're not unemployed right because and there's a logic to that I know some people when they hear that they think that's nutty but because you know if you're an 80 year old retired person and you're not trying to get a job it would be weird to say you're unemployed right so you're just you're not in the labor force but what can happen is if people become discouraged or just they know the job market prospects are so bleak they don't even try to get a job then you fall out of the labor force and so you're not part of the unemployed and so you're not in the numerator when they say the unemployment rate is such and such percent so I think a better metric to account for that is to look at what percentage of the civilian labor force is actually employed okay so that's not asking whether or not you're trying to work that's not getting inside your head that's just objectively looking to say how many people are there you know non-military and of working you know six I think it's 16 and above or they're 16 to 65 something like that maybe and then say what percentage of them are employed and so that figure right now is the lowest it has been since the 1970s and if you look at the chart over time I mean it's it goes like this and comes down and the reason it was rising in the 70s and you know through the 80s and 90s I think it peaked in the late 90s is because more and more women were formally entering the workforce okay and so the way they run these numbers like you know a woman who would have been a housewife in 1950 who has an office job in 1980 and now counts as working you know not that obviously people not that women weren't working in the 50s but you get the point that wasn't showing up in the statistics so that's partly why that ratio came way up and now it's as low as it has been in the 1970s so that's one measure to give you a more specific one if you look at just among teenagers so 16 to 19 year olds in the year 2000 of that demographic 16 to 19 year olds 52 percent of them were employed right now 34 percent of them are employed okay and so that's I mean that's a huge drop just in 17 years and again if you look at the chart of that thing it's it plummets during the the recession you know under George W. Bush it started to come back a little bit and then going into 2008 it fell off a cliff again and it just barely started coming back up okay so this idea that the labor market was bad for a few years after 2008 but then things bottomed out and now we got a tight labor market and the feds worried about price inflation and because everyone's got a job that is masking this huge you know millions of people who normally would have had a job at a young age that now aren't in the workforce so that's just another thing that in my mind is a seed that hasn't been planted if you will that is going to just show up over time so it's not that the direct problem from that is going to appear next Tuesday but the fact that there's millions of young people who normally would have had work experience just you know standard things like knowing how to show up for a job and not talk back and you know just to do a simple task and everything and those it matters if you don't if you miss out on that okay so I think some people are they don't fully appreciate just how much acculturation there is and just easing people into having a regular job you know a part-time job at McDonald's or something there's something to be said for that and so there's now a whole demographic that's missing that and I think you're going to see that over time as those people are going to have difficulty getting a job at all and so as they get older that's going to be a problem not just in terms of the economy but just socially if there's millions of people who really just can't find work so then switching to that and part of the reason is just those figures for who's in school that explains part of it but even if you just look at like teenagers who aren't in school the number of employed back in 2000s or right now there's still like a 10 percentage point drop okay so it's not simply that they all went to school and then but even within that my interpretation is not to say ah things are good instead of now students who are sorry young people who are going and becoming auto mechanics they're all becoming renaissance men and women because they're going to undergrad in our fine universities I don't think that's what it is I think it's more that they can't get a job and then they're going and racking up huge amounts of debt and not learning many valuable skills at colleges and so there that's another one of these trends that I'm seeing there's a lot of cliches and I know people say oh there's safe spaces on colleges and the snowflakes and whatever and you know if you look like the show he complains about it all the time Tom's here and so and that's all true but what I want to stress if you haven't seen that I think you might think we're exaggerating okay or they all come on and young kids are always smart Alex you really don't know you have no idea how bad it is okay there's something different this is not a matter of oh gee there's a bunch of people who have different views about what health insurance should be provided by the government that's not what I'm talking about I'm saying people who their reaction to oh there's a speaker coming to campus that we don't like that person's views we are going to credibly threaten that we will break stuff and hurt people we will set things on fire and smash windows and so then the school has to cancel because of security concerns and then that gets spun as oh yeah the reason that speaker couldn't come here is because he would incite violence I mean just the kind of that would do that nothing weird about that the reason the speaker can't come here is because he promotes violence by us his enemies that's a weird thing that's not a matter of disagreement that type of thing just shutting down debate is becoming more widespread the term could be cultural Marxism I've seen some people complain about that so that's not really accurate whatever label you want to put on that but that mindset and I saw it myself at NYU I went my buddy who just has this perverse sense of adventure there was like a feminist group talking about the history of the Soviet Union he's like Bob we're going to this meeting and so we were the only I think we were the only two guys in there and I was really uncomfortable and they were going through and so at the end and I tried to very timidly I said hi we're new here this is our first meeting but you know your talk you are mentioning how you were so proud of the fact that the women and the men were equal in the Soviet Union you know during this famine period but I mean the women in the United States had food so like does that does that matter you know and I said it's something like that and I know like right now I'm coming off as being sarcastic I really was trying to just like I was curious like the woman's face she was like like that like I can't it was like I had just told her that I was Napoleon you know what I mean so she wouldn't try to convince me I wasn't she wouldn't be like show me some ID because then I would say I'm the king I don't need ID what are you talking about that was the reaction she had oh you're one of those like one of the people who care about how much food people eat haha okay but again unless you've experienced it's really so this is not something that's going to be settled by plebiscite and oh well we're going to get you know mobilize our people we get enough petition I mean there's you can't settle this they reject rational argument now in their mind they would think you know that we do the same thing so I'm not saying that we're better or something but I'm just saying communication with someone who has that mentality is not really an issue this isn't just something like oh I don't like that person's politics it's far more qualitative and comprehensive than that and if you don't really know what I'm talking about trust me this is not simply a matter of oh man there's more Democrats on campus now than there used to be because they don't like Trump that's not what I'm talking about I'm saying this is a qualitative thing of we need to silence opposition because these people are evil people don't deserve to hear them you can't have free speech when there's someone who espouses hatred or someone who's from the patriarchy should not be given a platform because that would stifle free speech so that's why we're going to burn cars if this person comes and tries to talk that's the fullest expression of free speech is through burning cars you think I'm making up something to try to get a laugh out of you that's not what I'm doing I'm serious people they were asked to certain student activists and they said things just like what I'm saying there in their mind they were defending free speech by making it impossible for a speaker to come and say stuff they disagreed with okay other things in terms of the cultural milieu here this whole punch of Nazi I don't know if you've seen this so there was Richard Spencer was giving a thing on camera someone came up he's like a white nationalist guy someone came up just out of nowhere punched him and that started circulating people thought it was hilarious and punch a Nazi became a meme and I had thought people were kidding and I thought maybe they just meant hey I'm not losing sleep over this guy because I hate his gut and maybe that's what some of them meant but it became clear to me that no there were many people who they literally thought yeah those views are so distasteful someone who's talking about white nationalism or things like that fascism it's okay to punch him because that's completely unacceptable and you got to shut those people up what harm is there in doing that and again just alarming I would not have predicted people that I know would have said that one guy who said that he was more like I'm not losing sleep over it was his birthday and so I wished him happy birthday on Facebook and said hey why don't you go punch a Marxist just to see and he didn't want to do that so my point in flipping it was to show talking like that punch a Marxist that sounds crazy you know it's a joke you know I'm not serious because again and it's not because Marxism hasn't really had a bad record in terms of history but just I flipped it just to try to get to see how crazy this is but yet again if you're not on Twitter and stuff maybe you don't know you think I'm exaggerating but I'm telling you there are plenty of octable people that you would normally have thought would say oh yeah violence is absolutely unacceptable as a means of reconciling political histories that no they were saying no these people are so bad I can't believe in our country someone's you know waving the swastika and so yeah somebody goes and punches that person maybe that's a good thing so that's you know again so I'm saying if this if people are okay with using violence to shut up their political opponents now imagine if the economy crashes anywhere remotely as bad as you know I'm saying might happen that that's that's what I'm trying to get get across by this stuff is to say if people right now are putting on the table violence is okay or we're gonna look the other way when Antifa you know smashes windows and whatever because yeah that you know that Ann Coulter she says some horrible things so yeah maybe I wouldn't go and smash windows but I could see where those kids would do that if that's your mentality right now imagine how bad it's gonna be if the economy crashes also dovetailing with what Jeff was saying I think you know the next the next time a Democrat gets in the White House rightly or wrongly many there's millions of people who think there is an absolute monster right now in the White House who's dismantling everything they love about the country and so just the the payback the revenge that there's gonna be when the next Democrat gets in is you know I shudder to think about it and again I'm I hope this doesn't come off like I'm defending Trump or I think I'm certainly not but my point is just why I am very fearful for the future in terms of these trends another thing about the surveillance state that's another list of you know a trend here I've seen two quick things because I want to leave time for your guys questions the I used to be optimistic about it and I said okay I know there's like facial recognition software but if you know how those things work they need to be trained right the computer needs to know like be shown lots of photographs of people and to have it identified in order for like all the security cameras around the country to be you know if you wanted some computer algorithm to be able to track everybody the computer needs to be trained and so you might think okay I mean the only they don't have the manpower to do that the NSA how many people you would need millions of Americans to just upload photos of their own friends and relatives and then tag their identities so we still have no time whatsoever because that's what Facebook is right likewise the kind of stuff you know 1984 that vision of having the telescreen and everybody's home is monitoring and no one can say anything you know I used to think well there's no way if the government just mandated that Americans would realize wait a minute you can't just have listening devices putting our thing I mean people would need to voluntarily buy some product and put it in their house that could monitor everything they say and call it Alexa and what that's not gonna that's not gonna happen okay so there's there's all that stuff so as far as you know that's the pessimism so now what's the solution well obviously you know I would say education but now I'm a little more specific about it that the innovations we've seen Uber and Airbnb these are great because I think it is actually Jeff who said this in a different talk in terms of getting people to see the the ability of innovation and free enterprise and getting around government cartels that's you know the textbook you know lectures from Tom Di Lorenzo or somebody that would never have convinced millions of progressives but when they take an Uber ride and know what a cab ride in New York City is like and then see that the cab lobby is saying oh no Uber is unsafe you know you might get abducted by your driver and so that's why it's gotta be illegal they can see no that's just they're protecting their turf you know it's so and I know lots of people in Nashville art musicians and things who are renting out rooms through Airbnb and then they tried to shut that down I think it failed but there was a measure from the hotel lobby to shut that down of course is being unsafe and you know the building could cave in we can't have our visitors to our fine city you know having a building cave in on them when clearly it was because the hotels were losing business right so a lot of progressives who normally don't trust free enterprise they can see the virtues of these things also Bitcoin and alt currencies in general whether Bitcoin is a good idea or not or is going to do anything that's not my point just people see the notion of a blockchain they get oh wait a minute somebody could just invent a new type of money that circumvents the system and people voluntarily can embrace it or not so that I think are good examples just to show people this is how it could work in practice to see the conventional ways the things that are produced by the government you know the heavily regulated industries the money that's you know the central banks produce if somebody comes up with a better idea with technology now it's a lot easier just to start producing that and to see the virtues of it you don't like Bitcoin if you think it's a bubble okay don't use it I think people get oh whereas it's a little bit harder to say oh if you think you didn't like QE well just don't use the dollar you know and you see how that those two don't ring the same and so people can see the virtues of segregating things again not because oh our way is better but because we don't know who's right and so you see the virtue of sort of insulating things and not having all our eggs in one basket and just the virtues of diversification so I think people can see that with these distributed networks and so what all that is leading up to is I feel much more strongly about what's going to happen in the next 10 20 years to me the only realistic thing that might preserve liberty and be a good force mitigating a lot of these trends is more serious succession movement and just to take something specifically like Texas breaking apart now that doesn't you know that's not going to happen in the next year or two but if things got really bad like I'm talking about you know in the federal government you know defaulted on its debt and the dollar crashed and so on then you really might start seeing if there was like a terrorist attack and there's martial law being imposed you could very well see that becoming a very serious thing and so the reason I like you know the idea of Texas is just because geographically that just logistically would be easier for Texas to break away than some interior state another reason is I live in Texas so you know that's if we break away and my pledge is if we do break away and then I don't have to pay federal income taxes and if you want to hire me as a consultant I will pass the savings on to you all right that's this isn't about me all right but I just happen to live in Texas also though I'm new there I've only been this my going to my fourth year there the culture in case you don't know it's it would be easier for them to become their own country than people who live elsewhere so for example people in Texas I talked to them if they're traveling in Europe and someone over there says oh where are you from they don't say I'm American they don't say I'm from the US they say I'm from Texas right whereas you know when I was a kid if I try I wouldn't say I'm from New York state like they wouldn't even occur to me I'd say I'm from the US they apparently I've heard from several sources there when you're with the kids growing up in Texas they in their school their history classes they learn more about Texas state history than they do about US history again I think most of us if you're not from Texas you don't know anything about your state history but that's how they're taught there there is a tradition of them being their own country Phil Magnus one time came out to Texas Tech we hosted him for he was part of this conference we did and he was given a little the history of Texas and so he starts to talk and said I guess he's from Texas too he said hey I'm free how many people how many native Texans do I have you don't have the class or anything he was all right let's give a hand for the best country on earth and they're oh yeah right so I mean that I'm just saying they have that mentality already so I think that there's that element and what so what it would do just so you can see it's not just oh so therefore the people in Texas would be all right and it's not even just oh and there would be a refuge for people in the other 49 states who wanted to move to Texas and if that were a possibility but then that would also temper the things that the you know remain remainder of the US government could do okay because it would know we can't have taxes be too outrageous because then everyone's just going to go to Texas okay so it's sort of like one of the conventional explanations of how did political liberty as we know it why did that emerge in Western Europe and not like in China or somewhere else and one of the standard stories is well because of the geography and other specific factors accidental factors there were squabbles among nobles and so on in Western Europe and it was easy for exit it was easy for people just to leave one jurisdiction and go elsewhere and so that sort of forced you know the noblemen and so on there the kings they couldn't be too tyrannical because they would just lose population people would vote with their feet okay so that sort of mentality is what I think would help temper it let me just end though by saying two things so I think in terms of what can people do it's just real simple stuff like just get it on the table that hey suppose the people in Texas we saw what happened in Catalonia right if you're not familiar with it they were voting to break apart and the government was sending in you know cops and stuff breaking up voting booths and things and saying this is illegal you can't you know you don't have the authority to do this I mean so they were literally suppressing the vote and so I think it's it'd be useful to just start planning those seeds just you know you're at a dinner party and you know just talking to someone say hey you know suppose somebody's in a relationship and they decide they want to leave is it acceptable to use violence to keep that person in the relationship and everyone's going to say of course not what are you talking about you monster you go okay good I'm glad you support this session thanks you just do it like that the other thing is to I think the word secession scares people because they naturally think slavery and so maybe call it independence so that's you know just in terms of because it's you know the American Revolution we talked about the declaration of independence the war for independence America achieve its that was a secessionist movement but yet that's not the way Americans think about they think of it as you know what some people call the Civil War what in Texas they call the war of northern aggression right that's what people associate secession it's the same thing but I think it's a lot easier just if nothing else to force people to say no if the people of Texas wanted to be independent too bad right at least make them say that whereas if you say I'm not again secession that that sounds like a technical legal question okay so that's so in me personally what I'm going to start doing is I think I will look at you know there's budding secessionist movements in Texas you know people organizations that have been around that got a big boost in popularity and attention when it looked like Hillary Clinton was going to be the president just like in California when Trump won all of a sudden the secessionist movement out there jumped in popularity and so like I might do things and look at because there's a lot of practical difficulties like Jeff was alluding to like what about social security what about their portion of the federal debt so to at least have that stuff in place and ready to go in case for various reasons all of a sudden this becomes a political possibility last thing I'll leave you with is I just looked at a poll online that said if at least 70% of the people in Texas wanted to leave the union what should the federal government do and there were three choices one was wish them well the second was insist on a monetary payment before they leave and the third was invade and I'm glad to report 80% of the respondents chose A now admittedly these were my Twitter followers I set up the poll but still it's it's progress and of the ones who said invade some of them clarified said oh I thought you said what would the government do not what should it do so there is that and then somewhere just trolls so there's that but in all serious as I do honestly think it might be good to for people just to start planning those seeds just to get people because I think most people you know with the declaration that depends where it be weird for them to say no if a bunch of people really wanted to leave we would bomb them into submission I think they're going to be has been to say but they might say it when it becomes a reality and so to get them on record now just to kind of you know have them think like that okay so with those happy thoughts thanks everybody